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    Helen picks up the phone, hesitates, and then calls Tessa. When her daughter answers, she says, “I have an interview at Anthropologie tomorrow.”
    “Mom,” Tessa says. “Mom. Mom.”
    “It's just for the holidays. Think of the discount!”
    “Don't do it.”
    Helen watches the second hand moving around the face of the kitchen clock. Looks out the window and sees only her reflection. “Thanks for your support. I'll let you know what happens.” She hangs up, then picks up the phone and hangs up again, harder. “What am I supposed to do?” she asks the phone. “What am I supposed to do?”
    She starts to go upstairs, where she intends to read until she falls asleep, then remembers she's not brought in the mail yet. There are bills, catalogues, and a large envelope from her publisher, overkill for what it holds: one letter. Helen sits at the table to read it.
    Dear Helen Ames ,
    You don't know me, but
    A fan letter. Exactly what she needs right now. Helen puts the letter in her robe pocket. She'll look at it after she's read a few chapters in a novel she bought yesterday. These letters aren't coming so often as they used to, and God knows that unless she gets another book out soon, they'll stop altogether. What a relief it will be to read that letter and apply the psychic balm that is a stranger's approval.

four
    “S O !” THE MANAGER AT A NTHROPOLOGIE, NAMED S IMONE, SAYS . “Why don't we talk here?” She gestures to a sofa, the same one where Helen filled out the application, and she and Helen sit at either end. Simone is a very friendly type, wide-eyed, loud-spoken. She's about thirty years old, with a chic, asymmetrical haircut and the overly shiny hair that many people have these days. It is Helen's opinion that hair can be too shiny and teeth too white, but what does she know. Simone wears an outfit that might very well have come from the store: nubby black and white wool pants, a whimsically patterned top, a wrap cardigan sweater. “Thank you so much for coming down here!” she says, and Helen sees the flash of a tongue stud. A tongue stud! Right in the middle of her tongue! Don't popcorn kernels get stuck on there? Can she chew gum? Is it true that those things enhance one's sex life? Do you take them out for funerals? She wills herself to stop this, to pay attention, to act like an interested candidate, worthy of hiring.
    “First off,” Simone says, “I have to tell you that the woman who read your application knows your work? She told me that you were ridiculously overqualified. I know your name, but I haven't read your books. I think my mom has, though.”
    “Oh, uh-huh.” Helen doesn't want to talk about her books. She wants to forget about the fact that she's a writer. Was. She sits up straighter to say, “In terms of the job, I guess I should tell you that I won't be here December twenty-first through the twenty-sixth. I should tell you that right away. I imagine that's prime time here, huh?”
    “Well, I mean … Yes .”
    “I'll be at my parents' house, I go to their house in Minnesota every year at that time. My daughter and I will be going. On the train, you know, it's nice to travel that way. Do you ever take a train when you travel?”
    Simone shakes her head no.
    “Well, anyway,” Helen says, “I wouldn't be able to work those days. And also … I'd prefer not to work the evening shift.”
    “I'm afraid we do require our part-time employees to work some evenings? And weekends.”
    “I see,” Helen says.
    “We only bend the rules for exceptional applicants?”
    “Well,” Helen says, laughing. She's not an exceptional applicant. The truth is, she's not overqualified, either; she's not even qualified. She's never worked retail, unless you count the time she was twelve years old and sold hot dogs on a golf course. All the way downtown this morning, she prayed she wouldn't have to learn how to work the register. Or lift anything heavy—she has occasional back problems.